Matatu : a history of popular transportation in Nairobi / Kenda Mutongi.

Author
Mutongi, Kenda [Browse]
Format
Book
Language
English
Published/​Created
  • Chicago : The University of Chicago Press, 2017.
  • ©2017
Description
vi, 350 pages : illustrations, maps ; 24 cm

Availability

Available Online

Copies in the Library

Location Call Number Status Location Service Notes
Firestone Library - Stacks HE283.5.Z7 N35 2017 Browse related items Request

    Details

    Subject(s)
    Summary note
    Drive the streets of Nairobi and you are sure to see many matatus colorful minibuses that transport huge numbers of people around the city. Once ramshackle affairs held together with duct tape and wire, matatus today are name-brand vehicles maxed out with aftermarket detailing. They can be stately black or come in extravagant colors, sporting names, slogans, or entire tableaus, with airbrushed portraits of everyone from Kanye West to Barack Obama, of athletes, movie stars, or the most famous face of all: Jesus Christ. In this richly interdisciplinary book, Kenda Mutongi explores the history of the matatu from the 1960s to the present. As Mutongi shows, matatus offer a window onto many socioeconomic and political facets of late-twentieth-century Africa. In their diversity of idiosyncratic designs they express multiple and divergent aspects of Kenyan life including rapid urbanization, organized crime, entrepreneurship, social insecurity, the transition to democracy, chaos and congestion, popular culture, and many others at once embodying both Kenya's staggering social problems and the bright promises of its future. Offering a shining model of interdisciplinary analysis, Mutongi mixes historical, ethnographic, literary, linguistic, and economic approaches to tell the story of the matatu as a powerful expression of the entrepreneurial aesthetics of the postcolonial world.
    Bibliographic references
    Includes bibliographical references (pages 267-344) and index.
    Contents
    • Introduction: Matatu "The only way to get there was on foot"
    • Moving people, building the nation, 1960-73
    • "It is a difficult system to beat"
    • "We are making a living by constitutional means"
    • Deregulation, 1973-84
    • Kenyatta's decree, 1973
    • "Jump in, squeeze, jump out - quickly!"
    • Government regulation, 1984-88
    • The Matatu bill of 1984
    • "Only those who are afraid use force"
    • Organized crime? 1988-2014
    • KANYU youth wingers
    • Mungiki: fighting a phantom?
    • Generation matatu, politics, and popular culture, 1990-2014
    • Music, politics, and profit
    • "Pimp" my ride
    • Self-regulation, 2003-14
    • The michuki rules
    • Conclusion: making it in Nairobi.
    ISBN
    • 9780226130866 (hardcover ; : alkaline paper)
    • 022613086X (hardcover ; : alkaline paper)
    • 9780226471396 (paperback ; : alkaline paper)
    • 022647139X (paperback ; : alkaline paper)
    LCCN
    2016057140
    OCLC
    958781205
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